Adapting When Your MVP Doesn’t Go To Plan

Cien Salon: 0:00

Absolutely. I think. In the first place, an MVP is called an MVP because you're wanting to validate and be able to pivot from it if you have to. That's what an MVP is for.

‍Amardeep Parmar: 0:16

Today we're talking about what to do if your MVP doesn't go to plan. We're looking at the exception you need to take, how you should think about an MVP to make sure they're doing everything correctly. How AI can help with the process of iteration. How to take the right feedback from a favorite MVP to know where we're not you should continue on. To help us out today, we've got our Cien Salon , who's a product leader and also the co-founder and CPO of a startup currently in Stealth. She's got an incredible background and has worked with great companies such as Angel Investing School and Techstars, as an mentor and startup advisor, too. We're The BAE HQ and I am Amar. I'm all about inspiring, connecting and scaling and we're powered by HSBC Innovation Banking. Enjoy this episode, So Cien, I think you picked a really interesting topic today, because so many people start off and they never release their MVP because they're so worried about what might have been going wrong. Through this episode, we can explain to people what they can do if that happens and hopefully makes it less scary for them and makes them able to continue ahead. You've obviously must have seen this before from different people. What's kind of the experience you've had there? Like how's.. Give people a bit of hope here where their first part hasn't worked out, and you've seen people turn it around and then gone through amazing things.

Cien Salon: 1:38

Yeah, no, absolutely. I think they're from the products that I've helped build and grow and even like the products that I've advised on. I think there are kind of two common themes that happen after an MVP is released. One they've got an MVP and a founder or the team would feel stifled and they don't feel like releasing their MVP to either a close group of cohorts or just to test who would adapt it. Or two they've got an MVP and they might have done a soft launch, but they're able to get from 0 to 10. Those are the two common themes that I've been seeing for the past several years. I've seen this in some of the products that I definitely have either worked on as the product lead or products that I've advised on. So you've got a product, you've got an MVP, and some of the founders I've worked with feel stifled because they feel like they can't release their MVP because it's not good enough. And some products have been released, maybe done a soft launch, but it's not getting traction. So one example that I've seen is we had one product that I led on, our beta and our waitlist grew. However, as soon as we let users in, we weren't converting. So what we did was we built on our understanding of how the product was performing by optimizing our data infrastructure, we started understanding where customers were dropping off, what customers weren't doing, and with that understanding we were able to convert more customers meaningfully. Then we removed our waitlist and that grew the customer based to millions of users.

Amardeep Parmar: 3:38

Wow. I guess one of the really hard challenges is once the MVP has come out. If it doesn't work out how you expect it to, some people will just freeze right of, like I knew. I knew people who don't believe in them, like all of the haters were right. How do you get through that mindset to like say actually no, this isn't the end of it, we can now go and do something. Have you any tips of people in that stage now where this they haven't yet pivoted because they're too worried about what they're failing again?

Cien Salon: 4:05

Yeah, I know absolutely, and there are many reasons why a founder or a team, a product team, would feel that way. One you're running out of runway and you're like we've tried what we thought we could do and we're not getting any traction. Or two you've done a bit of use, be testing, and you're using it yourself. You don't believe in your product. You're like I don't understand enough to be able to like confidently release it. Now, when you're in that position, it's easy to just like keep going or like keep build more features. Let's build more features to see what we can do. What you really have to do is look at your data, understand what is happening from a data perspective, whether that's, you know, like a quantitative data. You see you're seeing drop-offs in a particular step in your journey. Look at that, optimize one at a time and see if that will move the needle up. And to talk to more customers, get more cut, get your product in front of customers and collect that data and use it to inform what to do next. What do you need?

Amardeep Parmar: 5:06

to improve.

Cien Salon: 5:07

So, yeah, I think a lot of a lot of founders panic. They build on top of their existing features and they get lost in the mix and end up spending their entire runway and and still not getting any traction because they haven't understood when they're, where they're failing in their product.

Amardeep Parmar:

‍So you mentioned they're talking to customers and, obviously, ideally a lot of people talk to customers before they've released the MVP.

Amardeep Parmar: 5:35Have you ever seen any examples? Or like typically give people where maybe the first customer based they talked to wasn't correct customer based and how can you work about, how can we work out? Okay, these are people who should now be talking to after the initial MVP failed.Cien Salon: 5:48

That's a really good question. So and yes, sometimes it is the persona. So, for example, if you're B2B business and I've seen this before where you have a product that one of the one of the products that was in my portfolio previously had a really good solution for last mile delivery problems. Now they've identified a persona, but they didn't on, they didn't necessarily hone in on how to talk to this persona, that multiple personas and decision makers and influencers that they've identified, but they weren't able to understand how to address them by steeving out, how they talk about their problems internally and then position their products in such a way that that persona would just get it. So sometimes it is about not identifying the right persona, but also it's about identifying how, or like defining how, to accurately, accurately talk to that persona so that your solution resonates with them and they just go aha, yes, I need that.

Amardeep Parmar: 7:01

Yeah, and with the MVP collecting feedback as well, you think sometimes it's easier. So. You had a good example there before you mentioned where you let some people through your wait list and there's initial customers. What were some of the feedback you're getting there? Like what was something that will maybe flashing with what you thought beforehand?

Cien Salon: 7:21

No, that's a great question. So a lot of the feedback that we got from customers were calling us and saying, so what I did was actually look at the sentiment that was collected by customer service and also collecting like actual feedback by talking to actual customers. One thing that we found by looking at our customer service portal was that a lot of people were complaining about the signup process. They were being kicked out or they weren't approved by the signup process. We quickly understand that that was a problem. All right, we need to fix this. Then we also got some sentiment from customers that we interviewed that they didn't understand how the product works, because it was such a new product in the market then when we released it, it basically wanted to revolutionize how buying our pay later works. Instead of accessing the product at checkout, being able to split your payments at the checkout, you were able to just use a virtual card, like how any card, master card or visa works. They didn't understand the product. And so, we then implemented changes in the product where we made it clear how the product works. That is the type of sentiment that you want to collect, like understanding the pain points of the customers and then solving that within the product and let your product do the work of acquiring customers seamlessly, onboarding them and then converting them into transacting users.

Amardeep Parmar: 9:01

The communication aspect too. So obviously, one part is talking to the customers. But let's say you've got investors, or the team as well. How do you manage that conversation where you've released your initial product, you've built up that height within the team, within your investor space, and it hasn't quite worked how you expected it to? How do you keep them on board and there's people to be like, yes, this is the right place for me to continue working, or I've backed the right horse in terms of investment. How do you manage those conversations and expectations there?

Cien Salon: 9:29

That is a really great question, and I see this problem way too often than is needed. So a lot of founders that I've worked with and I've interacted with I see struggle with managing their investors' expectation. Investors initially liked the idea of the product, they're investing and then they get more invested emotionally, that they want to also contribute to the product's growth and how it develops. We see a lot of founders like adding features on top of features, wanting to improve the product quote-unquote, by adding the features that were suggested by their investors. Now what this means is that you end up with a backlog of just ideas from investors and then some that may have been suggested by customers, so your product ends up being convoluted and you don't know exactly what will get more customers to complete their sign up and convert and using your product. Now by doing so, this means that you're not getting transactions and you won't be able to tell your investors that you're getting either revenue or on route to profitability. What this means, then, is the investors will end up getting frustrated anyway, even if you've built the features that were their ideas on the first place. So what you should do is, again, make sure that you're collecting the right data to understand how your product is performing and use that data not only to inform your product backlog and what to prioritize when you build an optimizer product, but also to tell kind of like use that as a story, use that as a kind of like your base for your narrative when you talk to investors. This is why we did this. It's because the data said this and this is why we need to prioritize this, because the data is saying that. So it's all about having the right data to optimizer product, but also to talk to your investors.

Amardeep Parmar: 11:45

We hope you're enjoying the episode so far. We just want to give a quick shout out to our headline partners, HSBC Innovation Banking. One of the biggest challenges for so many startups is finding the right bank to support them, because you might start off and try to use a traditional bank, but they don't understand what you're doing. You're just talking to an AI assistant or talking to somebody who doesn't really understand what is you've been trying to do. HSBC have got the team they've built out over years to make sure they understand what you're doing. They've got the deep sector expertise and they can help connect you with the right people to make your dreams come true. So if you want to learn more, check out hsbcinnovationbankingcom. I think this power done was always really interesting because even before we're doing right, there's so many people that we get to talk to, like yourself, who've done incredible things, and sometimes we're like, oh, why don't you do this, why don't you do that? And you get all these different ideas from everywhere, but it's ideas not from the ground right and the customers are ones who actually been using it. That's when you need to pay the attention to the most, and I like to say that they're brought that data-driven approach because it's harder for investors to argue the data, whereas sometimes they can think they know better than you. And it's that real challenge sometimes, where sometimes they mean well, like I said, they're excited about their business in the product, but they're kind of leaning on you to do something which isn't really necessarily correct for the overall business.

Cien Salon: 13:05

And you'd have to think as well. One of the reasons that they probably are trying to involve themselves in your product development is there's nothing else is telling them that they should think otherwise. There's no data to kind of support your own ideas or how you prioritize your backlog, and so, with them being trying to be helpful, they're going to rely on their previous experiences and what they think is right, and you, without having the right data points to kind of shape the story of your product development, you won't be able to have a fruitful conversation with your investor as to why you should or shouldn't be doing things.

Amardeep Parmar: 13:46

I guess the other point too, which we have to discuss is let's say the MVP failed and let's say the data from that is indicating that maybe the initial idea isn't right and you shouldn't continue, or the products. There's too much of a gap there. It's also really hard decision to make there. So how do you know to say like, yes, this first version of our product didn't work, but there is another, there is something here to keep going versus this first version of the product failed and there probably is enough evidence that we can make it a success? How do you do that kind of conversation as well?

Cien Salon: 14:19

Absolutely. I think in the first place, an MVP is called an MVP because you're wanting to validate and be able to pivot from it if you have to. That's what an MVP is for. Now I've seen a lot of MVPs out there who have, who aren't necessarily, that aren't necessarily MVPs. They've been too well developed. People have invested in it. They wanted to, like, design it in the way that they you know, like they want to design it and they've added, like the best features in there, thinking I'm going to go to market with this and it's going to explode. An MVP is there so you can test and validate, will, is this going to solve a problem? And will the, will my target persona, keep using this, this, this solution, to solve the problems that they have? And then will they pay for it? Now, once you've answered these questions, then you reflect, like, all right, is it solving a problem? Are people paying for it? Okay, let's optimize. Now If it doesn't, you're going to have to go back on a drawing board, but founders have to understand what an MVP is for. It's not the most developed version of the product. You're wanting to test and be and reduce your costs, reduce your way. You know like, yeah, reduce your costs, reduce your errors by and maximizing your runway by understanding first if the initial idea that you have is is viable and and if people will will pay for it.

Amardeep Parmar: 15:49

It's. I think one of the things people are doing is obviously experiment with different MVPs, right A, B testing and things like that too. Do you have any recommendations on that side thing? So obviously you can experiment fast. If you're experimenting with different things at the same time, what do you tend to do, Like if you're leading a product? Would you try to focus on one MVP at a time or try to do multiple at the same time and see what comes of that?

Cien Salon: 16:10

I think that's an interesting approach. If you have the resource to like test multiple variations of your MVP, which I think is possible, you know you could have an MVP that is just a platform or community that you've built and then you talk about your problems. That could be an MVP. Or you have an MVP that you know like delivers balloons manually and you want to build a platform that would automate everything. That could be an MVP. But I think experimentation usually happens when you've proven something works. People are using your product, people are paying for your product and you're wanting to nudge users more through the journey. So, for example, previous experiments that I've done specifically on A-B testing is testing the onboarding flow and the sign-up process within my product because I see that, yes, some people are converting, but a lot of people are dropping off in this specific stage of the product. Now what I'd probably A-B test on is either where I'm positioning the collecting of the phone number versus where I'm asking them to link their debit card, or it could be A-B testing a button placement on an email, or it could be A-B testing on a copy on a landing page. So A-B testing is just trying to understand how you can nudge more users through. It's different from when you're building an MVP. You're literally like in the most simplest version of your solution, just trying to offer into your early adapters. Can you use this? See if it solves a problem that you have? And if we were to optimize this, how much will you pay for it?

Amardeep Parmar: 17:57

So I also know that you're interested in AI and you've been using that with products too. How does that change the conversation relating to recovering from a failed MVP? How can AI help founders to adapt more quickly?

Cien Salon: 18:08

I love that question. So a little bit background of my journey with AI and machine learning, I suppose, is about five or six years ago I integrated my first chatbot and trained my first chatbot. Now, there was a lot of doubt whether to actually classify it as something that is a learning machine, but I did learn how to build a knowledge base and train a chatbot. That reduced significantly, like the customer success service times and costs with 20% I believe and so that understanding that experience has really, I would say, prepared me for when open an AI chat GPT just made it accessible to build multiple chatbots at the same time. I build many. Now where I see AI tools plug in is that I find that AI tools would help founders and startups maximize their runway by automating a lot of their tasks and then also reducing their costs in terms of if they want to create content and create a robust content strategy, they could use AI tools for that. Or if they don't have a resource in product management, they can use chatbots to generate their ethics or user stories. Or if they don't have access to a pitch coach, they can use an AI tool to help them refine their pitch decks. So there are many ways that AI tools can help them automate, improve without spending a lot, and then in terms of with their MVP. So with MVPs, sometimes, historically, you need a big team to be able to get you to market. You need a marketing team, maybe a smaller marketing team, you need a product team, a development team. With these AI tools, you could literally release a no-code version of your MVP. Use AI tools to help you with your content strategy and, yeah, go to market cheaper, be more lead.

Amardeep Parmar: 20:35

So I know you're building this start to be stealth right now. How are you using AI yourself in terms of product journey, to iterate and to learn more and get to the right solution?

Cien Salon: 20:46

Great question, great question. I'm actually designing a course around this, but I've been using a lot of tools to kind of scale my productivity. So, for example, I use Otter AI that transcribes all my interviews and then it allows me to and then chat GPT allows me to analyze common themes, sentiment from my research interviews, but also from a documentation perspective. I could literally create a prompt, share some documentation link and it would build out the documentation for me. There are many content creation as well, so we're trying to build out now kind of like our content strategy. It just allows me to automate and scale quickly and then, from a product creation, we're using a lot of tools to help us design and test our initial ideas. So we've been able to stay lean and have been able to build a prototype, been able to ideate and do a lot of market research. That is getting us ready to launch.

Amardeep Parmar: 21:57

So we obviously can't talk about where the product is. But I have yet to set back so far in this, where you had an idea and it didn't quite work out and has your the steps you've outlined so far. Is there anything else you can maybe add to that that we haven't talked about yet? That's helped you in the journey.

Cien Salon: 22:14

Absolutely. So we are in the process of defining what our MVP is and we thought that we had a definition, so this is even pre-MVP. This is ideation phase. We had an initial idea of what our product is going to be, what set of features. We actually prototype this initial idea of our product. Now, after having more conversations and conducting a thorough differentiator competitive analysis, we found out that if we were to build a go-to-market strategy for our initial view of the product, it would have been more expensive and difficult because there were already existing players in the market. So we had an honest conversation about, all right, going into 2024, we know that raising is going to be difficult and we know that we don't want to spend how much we raise in marketing. But if we were to go to this market with this existing idea of our solution, we're going to have to spend a lot. So one thing that we can do is hone in on what can make us different and not necessarily pivot. Our mission is the same. Our vision is the same. We want people to build wealth faster and more efficiently. But we need to find a gap in the market and service that gap in the market so that we can be more strategic with our GTM. So yeah, and then that helps us more refine our MVP and be more cost-effective with our build.

Amardeep Parmar: 23:46

You mentioned there about the differentiator analysis as well, but people aren't familiar with that term. Could you just explain to them what that means?

Cien Salon: 23:52

Absolutely so differentiator analysis or analysis competitive analysis, basically allows you to give a view of your competitor's value proposition, unique selling point, the features, and it allows you to map out what is being done well in the market already, what isn't being done in the market at all, or what isn't being done at the market at all. So with that view, you then are able to see the gaps that you can address.

Amardeep Parmar: 24:26

Yeah, I think that's so important because I think sometimes we see a lot right, because obviously you probably see too many different decks come in and then you see decks that have basically the same idea and all that in the market already and they don't know about each other. It's like I shouldn't know about your competition if you don't know about your competition, and it's really important. Sometimes I think you forget that they have an idea which they love, but they haven't. Just because they haven't found the solution doesn't mean the solution isn't already out there and you've got to do the work to find that, which you obviously did, and you can then pivot, whereas imagine, you didn't do that analysis and then you spent all that money launching a product and then found out about it, right?

Cien Salon: 25:03

Yeah, and we've seen a lot of players out there who had to do the same, like they pivoted too late, they've run out of money and they weren't able to continue. And that's why you know, like market research before you build your MVP just reduces your costs, mitigates the risk. And then doing another one post MVP just to check, you know like, okay, what do we optimize now, what do we optimize next? But also actually, with the MVP, with the differentiator analysis, when you map out your competitor's value proposition, you're also able to kind of and if you decide to go with the same, to go for the same persona, go for the same problem what you can do by identifying how each of these players position themselves in the market is then come up with your own positioning to differentiate yourself. So, yeah, I do. I recommend every early stage founder, start-up founder, to definitely sit down and invest time in doing one.

Amardeep Parmar: 26:07

Awesome. So thanks so much for coming on today. We're going to go into the quick fire questions now. So first one and if you need a second, don't worry, you can look at LinkedIn is so who are. Sorry, I do that again. So first question is who are three British Asians that you think are doing incredible work that you'd love to shout out for the audience to pay attention to?

Cien Salon: 26:32

So the three Asians that I am a big fan of in the UK are Tanveer Mohamed, who I'm collaborating with on a project. Neda of keshty, she's a founder of Keshty. She's an amazing human being, but also very knowledgeable around how to scale effectively with a focus on operations of people. And then Ina Yulo, Head of marketing at AWS. I'm cheering her on because she's also Filipino, like me, and I'd love to see more Filipinos in the kind of like startup ecosystem.

Amardeep Parmar: 27:10

Awesome, I am gonna let my executive assistant as well know that you're Filipino, because she loves it when we get Filipinos on.

Cien Salon:

Okay, amazing, amazing.

Amardeep Parmar: So the next question is if people want to find out more about you, find out more about you're up to where should I go to?

Cien Salon: 27:25

Check out my LinkedIn, but I also have a website, Cien salon c-i-e-n-s-o-l-o-n. com, so that website is focused on helping more startup founders launch and grow more cost effectively, so they'll get a lot of resources there.

Amardeep Parmar: 27:43

And then is there anything that you need help with right now that maybe the audience could help you with?

Cien Salon: 27:47

That's a great question. I think right now, one of my core mission in life and I believe is my purpose is to help more women and people be able to have access to tools that will allow them to generate meaningful wealth that will prepare them for when they have families, for when they retire, because it's a problem that I can definitely resonate with and I think existing solutions right now are just inaccessible for someone like me. So if my ask would be if there are communities out there who are on a mission to achieve the same, or on the same mission is to reach out, and then perhaps we can do something together.

Amardeep Parmar: 28:40

Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on. Have you got any final words for the audience?

Cien Salon: 28:45

My final words to the audience is let the product dictate how you'll grow. So I think, specifically for founders out there who are either okay, let me repeat that again. So I guess my last words would be specifically for founders who are building an MVP or are stuck after having built their MVP is that let your product dictate how you'll grow. Understand how your product is performing where you're not performing and use it to influence you, how you prioritize your product backlog and as well as how you build your story for your investors and for your customers as well.

Amardeep Parmar: 29:42

Hello, hello everyone. Thank you so much for listening. It makes a huge amount to us and we don't think you realize how important you are, because if you subscribe to our YouTube channel, if you leave us a five-star review, it makes the world of difference. And if you believe in what we're trying to do here to inspire, connect and guide the next generation of presentations if you do those things, you can help us achieve that mission and you can help us make a bigger impact, and by doing that it means we can get bigger guests, we can host more events, we can do more for the community, so you can play a huge part. So thank you so much for supporting us.

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